Here’s the problem with the so-called adherence problem. The challenge is far bigger than just “is the patient or isn’t the patient taking their meds?” In the podcast this week, I speak with Pat Meisner from Actual Meds.

Today I speak with Pat Meisner about the work that Actual Meds is doing to chip away at this gigantic constellation of issues. One of the aspects of Actual Meds I was most impressed by is their ability to look at the patient holistically and integrate within the patient’s overall care management.

Today I speak with Ari Tulla from Better Doctor about the importance of healthcare transparency, how to evaluate the quality of physicians. We sidebar on Ari’s new book, written to inspire healthcare entrepreneurs.

Common scenario – Patient has a condition. They Google their condition and turn up millions of hits. They are paralyzed by over-choice and end up doing nothing, exacerbating their health and possibly total costs. Their treatable little problem balloons into a much more acute one. Enter WiserTogether, a platform to help patients find the total range of treatment options available to them and evaluate those treatment options based on their own personal decision-making criteria like how much will this cost and how much of my time will it take.

Brian recently sold his first healthcare venture and he’s now moved on to a new one called Blue Stream Health. The idea is to bridge supply with demand. On one side of the equation, you’ve got a home healthcare worker in need of a translator, for example. On the other side, you’ve got 4 translation suppliers and 2 of them are swamped at the moment. When the home health worker presses the button that says, “get me a translator” that request goes into the Blue Blue Health hub and routed to an available translator.

I really enjoyed my conversation with Jake, a founder and epidemiologist from WellFrame. And I’m not calling it a great discussion just because he taught me a new word (task-shifting). We talk about Wellframe’s very successful cardio-rehab pilot, i.e. how to significantly get more patients to participate. And we talk about how to deal with “social determinants” that severely limit the outcomes of socially vulnerable patient populations.